Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Thursday March 28, 2013 @01:50PM
from the n-gage-returns-from-beyond dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "After being tweaked and polished for months with the help of feedback from pro gamers and enthusiasts alike, Razer's Project Fiona has finally come of age. Re-named as Razer Edge Pro, this gaming tablet is way more than a mere plaything. Razer Edge Pro is a beast which packs a dual-core Intel Core i7-3517U Ivy Bridge processor with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GT 640M LE graphics card with 2GB of dedicated memory. All this in a small 7 by 11 by 0.8 inches wide frame which weighs only 2.14 pounds. Comparing the Razer Edge to anything else is tough, considering that it doesn't necessarily have a true competitor. However in a series of performance comparisons with other powerful tablets and ultraportable gaming laptops, Razer Edge performed better than the tablets but wasn't at par with ultraportable gaming laptops. For instance when comparing scores from 3DMark 11, the Edge Pro scored 2,503 points at entry settings and 504 points in extreme mode putting it ahead of both competing tablets, the Microsoft Surface Pro (1,055 Entry, 206 Extreme) and Samsung ATIV SmartPC (1,044 Entry, couldn't run at Extreme mode), but behind the gaming-focused laptops, like the the Maingear Pulse 11 (3,868 Entry, 724 Extreme) and the Razer Blade (3,458 Entry, 716 Extreme). What's baffling is that with all accessories incuded (gamepad dock and the console dock) the final price of the tablet is a cool $1,870, which most expensive than not only the two tablets tested but also the two gaming gaming laptops compared. It remains to be seen whether the Razer Edge Pro is something special or just on the edge of it."

The point of it is to be a gaming device, allegedly, but it doesn't come with the gaming controller. The gaming controller looks positively painful to use even for the life of the battery, which isn't all that amazing either...

Thinking the same thing here.... it all depends on the game, and how it is controlled.

If it used the gravity/tilt sensors as part of the game and some drop-simple controls, okay. If it's a full-on FPS that has a shitload of bindings to it? Hell, not even a console can do such a game true justice.

Problem is, if you need to add an external device or two (be it a controller, mouse, keyboard, whatever), then what would be the point?

Good question - but if the game were heavily graphics-intensive, yet required few if any controls (e.g. flight/dogfight games and whatnot) I could see the arrangement as useful.

IMHO though, where it would really shine is in 3D/CG hobbyist markets, if tablet controls could be slaved to common functions, and a stylus could take a lot of the rest. This way you could run, say, Poser, DAZ|Studio, Blender, and suchlike to really tear into a 3d view/ You could also perhaps slave the camera to tilt/position sensors

Reading the summary made me roll my eyes, but after checking out the review I admit I'm intrigued. The docking port with controller handles could turn this into a very fun and powerful, large-screen version of a GBA/PSP/etc. I can imagine dozens of indie Steam titles that would play really well on this kind of machine - Super Meat Boy for example.

Now I'm not going to buy one, considering the price tag, but I'm surprising myself by not wanting to mock the concept.

That is indeed a much more detailed and thus review, it can be a bit hard to follow for the casual reader though.

Not quite sure what market they're targeting though, it sounds like a cool to have item, but I wanted to take mobile gaming seriously in my life for reasons unknown, I would need a very strong pitch to keep me away from alienware's m11x.

Perhaps because that is the review for the Razer Edge, and this is about the Razer Edge Pro?

FTFA: "The Edge comes in two flavors, base and Pro. The entry-level SKU has an i5-3317U (1.7GHz), 4GB of DDR3, and a 64GB SSD for $999, while the Edge Pro bumps that up to an i7-3517U (1.9GHz), 8GB, and a 128GB SSD for $1299. Upgrading to a 256GB drive costs a further $150. The evaluation unit we received was the full-tilt Edge Pro 256GB, which has an SF-2200-based ADATA XM14 mSATA SSD. "

Tiny laptops with high end processors, video cards, etc... immediately make me concerned for the TDP of the box. Either the cooling fans are going to be constantly on leaf blower mode and/or the thing will be uncomfortably warm in just a couple of minutes of gaming.

Thermal Design Point - When the device is in it's worst possible power use case (maxed out CPU, GPU, drive usage, etc)... the device should be able to dissipate all of the heat it is generating without going above the safe operating temperature of any of its components. That is notoriously difficult in small form factor devices unless you use components that are all designed for minimal power use... which this is not using.

So either this has some incredibly amazing method of heat dissipation*, or it will overheat when in use, leading to reliability issues and shortened component life.

Once the flow of air over a cooling fin is turbulent, moving the air faster causes the cooling rates to be worse, not better.

Look at the air intake of any sports car. It is very small. That is because it uses that small air intake and then widens the airflow (called a difuser) before the air engages any of the cooling elements for the engine. The designers of the car are slowing down the air speed in order to get better cooling rates.

Given the brand name, I was expecting a cheap piece of plastic with some sort of glowy light, labelled 'gaming' to sell some units. Couldn't they instead have focused their energy on making a single product that a legitimate gamer would want to use, and then maybe branch out into trying to create a market for an overpriced, underpowered wannabe laptop with a low res screen?

Windows gaming has been treated like the ugly stepchild for years, and really the latest SimCity saga is just another example of how badly treated gamers are. I personally had been driven away from windows games for years. I have only been brought back by indie games from the Humble Bundle that don't treat me like cattle, but there are now 5 humble bundles (it has its own store) of cross platform...the current one http://www.humblebundle.com/ [humblebundle.com] is Android only!? [and not just for twitchers] Suddenly I'm seve

These are the top selling games on Play right now (they are having a Disney sale), but as you see its a nice mixture of Racing; FPS; Puzzle; Tower Defence; Violent Open world games...and Minecraft. The fact that it has great casual games is an advantage...To say Android gaming is only about Angry Birds is like saying Windows gaming is only about the Sims.

For Android gaming to go mainstream, it will have to start supporting input methods other than the touchscreen. Fortunately, Samsung is coming out with a gamepad for its Galaxy devices [gamasutra.com], so hopefully they will have enough market power to get app vendors to start supporting them. Other vendors are going to be releasing Android gamepads as well; hopefully they will be compatible.

For Android gaming to go mainstream, it will have to start supporting input methods other than the touchscreen. Fortunately, Samsung is coming out with a gamepad for its Galaxy devices [gamasutra.com], so hopefully they will have enough market power to get app vendors to start supporting them. Other vendors are going to be releasing Android gamepads as well; hopefully they will be compatible.

Only AMD builds sane x86 parts for the mobile gaming space. Things are so bad for Intel that when AMD launched its first APU parts for notebooks (Llano), Intel paid Anandtech to EXCLUDE the graph showing the AMD notebook gaming for twice as long as the equivalent Intel one.

Then AMD significantly improved the APU with Trinity. Now AMD has massively improved the lower power APUs with Jaguar CPU and GCN GPU based Temash and Kabini parts. (Sorry for all the technical acronyms, but you need to know the language